Did you believe the messenger? My analysis of the Optus CEO’s response to the outage
Against the benchmark of a credible, believable, self-assured CEO of a major enterprise in a media conference regarding a significant crisis – conveyed through their affect, body language, speech and words – I scored Kelly Bayer-Rosmarin’s performance in her 8 November, six minute Australian Broadcast Corporation TV interview with presenter Joe O’Brien as: 6.5/10.
Overall, Bayer-Rosmarin’s (BR) presentation of herself and communication of her ideas was smug, defensive and lacking in empathy. My view is this. That if you don’t believe in the messenger, you won’t believe the message. Many times during the interview BR’s affect undermined my belief in her.
It was noteworthy that how BR presented in response to this crisis, was similar to how she presented in the September 2022 cyber attack on Optus (please see my post about the attack below **)
Below is further analysis:
Positives areas included:
- Quiet composed carriage of her body.
- Answers to questions were brief.
- BR supporting the efforts of her staff in responding to the crisis.
Areas for improvement include the following:
- At the start of the clip, BR’s first words of apology rang hollow. Her quick, breezy, speaking cadence with a jaded, flat, facial expression, matter of fact affect, and offhand vocal tone, were incongruent with her words of apology. With the style of her delivery, BR could just as well have been reporting on last quarter’s numbers, eg. “Unfortunately the numbers today weren’t what we expected”. Anything that one feel deeply about, is, not said quickly, is displayed with a greater facial expression, and is supported by increased vocal intonation.
- There was a disconnection between BR’s repetitive, rehearsed, talking points in answering questions – that no doubt had been drilled into her by her communications team – and the pain her customers were experiencing.
- At the 2:31 -2:57 segment of the clip BR’s expressed irritation (particularly on the word ‘understand’) through her vocal tone in response to O’Brien’s question. QUESTION: “Do you accept the impact for many people has been significant.” ANSWER: “Yeah we understand how much people rely on our connectivity…”
- Also during the 2:37 – 2:57 segment BR’s voice quavered and she was on the verge of crying. The quavering was most pronounced at the end of the segment, starting at the 2:51 mark with, “We are very dedicated…” and ending with “...that we let them down.”
- BR’s emphasis on the great experience Optus was striving to give customers, eg. “Services they can get no where else” was in the vein of marketing copy, and out of place with being genuine in her apology. It was as if her advisors had told her, “Be sure to drop in this phrasing, whenever you can“.
BR unfortunately does not realise that her customers, the public and the media would have more sympathy for her and for the difficulty of her position in handling the crisis, if she took the time to feel their pain, and then to let that feeling be openly expressed through her affect and through her delivery.
The poet Horace said, “If you wish me to weep, you must mourn first yourself.” BR didn’t mourn first – or mourned too little – about the pain her customers were, and are feeling.
Here is the LINK for the clip
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* Here is my analysis of Bayer-Rosmarin’ performance responding to the September 2022 cyber attack of Optus.
